Have pressure cookers become the new underwear or shoe bomb? It’s beginning to look like it. Federal agents arrested a Saudi Arabian traveler who arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Monday with a pressure cooker in his possession. This household aid, you may recall, was a key component in the Boston Marathon bombings last month.
But the pressure cooker was not the only clue to the likelihood the man was not in the country to make stew. The Detroit News notes:
Hussain Al Kwawahir will be arraigned at 1 p.m. in federal court for allegedly using an altered passport and lying to a Customs and Border Protection Agent about the pressure cooker.
Al Kwawahir arrived at the airport Saturday from Saudi Arabia, via Amsterdam, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in federal court.
He told agents he was visiting his nephew, who attends the University of Toledo.
While inspecting his luggage, officers first became aware a page was missing from Al Kwawahir’s passport. He replied that he did not know how the page was removed.
When customs agents found the pressure cooker in among the man’s belongings, he told them he had brought the kitchen gadget for his nephew because the devices are not sold in the United States. He later altered his story, saying that his nephew had purchased a pressure cooker in the U.S. but that it was cheap and broken,
